Right Wing Lunatic

Here's where we start to see the media propaganda machine get put into high gear.  CNN is running a tear jerker story about a man who takes care of the Baghdad dead voluntarily.  A noble cause if there ever was.

CNN's painting it as a "oh my God, things are horrible there" story.  However, I'll put it into context for you.

Most of the dead are believed to be victims of sectarian animosity, slain after they were kidnapped or assassinated in so-called extra-judicial killings or in massive bombings.

True, most of the dead are probably done in by sectarian violence.  However, how many of them are victims of crimes?

Such grim volunteer work isn't entirely new to the region. Under former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the sheik said, they often buried more than three dozen unidentified corpses a month.

So, let's assume that these three dozen people were all victims of crime.  Just an assumption, I know, but let's assume for the sake of the argument.

After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, that number rose to around 250 a month, he said. Following last year's Askariya bombing, the volunteers buried as many as 2,000 per month. The numbers now are back in the low hundreds, the sheik said.

So, "low hundreds".  Does that mean 200?  300?  Well since they don't say, I'm going to assume 300.  The reason why is because they say "low" and that's not "mid" or about 500.  Granted, I don't like to assume anything, but I am only assuming for the sake of the argument.

With a population of around 7 million, a murder rate of 300 a month translates to one murder per 1,944 people.  In contrast Philadelphia, the nations worst murder rated city, has a murder rate of 406 people for a population of around 5.8 million.  That translates to one murder per 14,285 people.  Sounds bleak doesn't it?  With a murder rate of 7.34 times the worst US city, it does indeed sound bad.

However, this is in a war zone.  This is with people who knowingly cut people's heads off and strap explosives to their bodies and kill hundreds of people.  Bad?  You bet.  As bad as they want you to believe?  Not in the least.  I'd be satisfied with a murder rate in Baghdad similar to that of a normal American city. 

How do we do that?  Well according to Democrats, we pull out of Iraq and it'll be sunshine and rainbow land!  So if you think that all of a sudden that by pulling out that more violence won't be there, you're deluding yourself.  I'm certainly not saying we should stay there indefinitely, but we certainly shouldn't leave if we are making progress towards significantly reducing the violence in Iraq.

Travis

travis@rightwinglunatic.com

Labels: iraq

# posted by Travis @ 9:48 AM